Somewhere Between Who I was And Who I’m Becoming

31 July 2025

High School and Navy Bootcamp Graduations

I’ve lived through noise. Through the catapults slamming against the deck beneath where I slept, sirens in my head from conducting drills, the loud silence that follows a mental breakdown. But writing? That’s my way of listening. It’s how I fill the deafening silence, how I make sense of the void. 

I joined the military seeking structure and purpose, but in reality I was searching for an escape. I didn’t know that I would leave with just uniforms, memories and a few great friends that I now call family. I left with a version of myself I have still been trying to understand ever since. 

At the time, everything felt unstable. My relationship with my mother was back and forth like a seesaw, I had no money to my name, and desperate a sense of self. Joining the military looked like the best option. After all I come from a family of military, how hard could it be? I thought if I could survive bootcamp, I could survive myself.

A day before I was set to depart, I announced it to my family. My mother felt betrayed I didn’t include her in the process. But I needed to do something for myself, without any outside influence. Without someone asking me, “Are you sure you want to sign your life away?  Be gone for long periods of time?”.  

The truth was I didn’t have a perfect plan. I had an instinct. I had to leave for myself, to be apart of something bigger than me, something that might make me stronger. I wanted to be useful. I wanted to be seen. And deep down, I wanted a clear instruction on how to live. 

I was young, idealistic, and hurting in ways I didn’t have the words for. The military became a place where I could hold all of that, set it to the side, even if it never truly fixed it.